“Colds and flu viruses aren’t very effective mimics because their evolution is driven by natural selection—but you can bet your life that the designers of bioweapons are much better at it. Hyperflu is the equivalent of a shot across civilization’s bow. The real war won’t begin until the autoimmune provocateurs are released—and when they are, any general-purpose responsive system is likely to be turned, producing cures far worse than the diseases. Packaging the systems in clothing rather than in the cells of the body is ingenious, but if the flesh/fabric relationship is intimate enough to allow the systems to work, it’s probably too intimate to prevent them from being turned. In the end, the piecemeal solutions will probably be the ones that work best—and best is a relative term. There is no ultimate defense. Plague war is coming, and billions are going to die. Not next year, or the year after, but soon enough.”
Lisa had to suppose that it was all true, even though Chan couldn’t tell her exactly what it was that Edgar Burdillon had been working on for the MOD, let alone what the fashion industry had waiting for the new season to arrive. So why on earth, she wondered as she turned her back on the ruined room, did she feel so ludicrously cheerful? How could she be looking forward to working for a half-baked organization like the Institute of Algeny? Wasn’t that a defeat, no less ignominious by virtue of the fact that it was a fate she would have to share with Morgan Miller and Chan Kwai Keung?
“You must be sorry to be going,” she said to Morgan as they descended the staircase together. “This place has been your life.”
“No, it hasn’t,” he told her with customary perversity. “I’ve lived my life in the privacy of my own skull, and I’ll live the rest of it in exactly the same place. It doesn’t matter in the least where the props and waste-disposal units are.”
“You never cease to surprise me,” she said sarcastically.
“I doubt that very much,” he countered. “I took the trouble to keep only one thing up my sleeve, and once that became too hot to hold, I became absolutely transparent.”
“Arachne West said she thought you’d done the right thing,” Lisa remembered.
“I’m not about to return the compliment,” Morgan retorted tartly. “My arm still hurts, in spite of all the best resources of modern medicine. Now that the grafts have taken, I’m assured it will heal perfectly, without leaving the slightest scar, but memory’s scars don’t vanish so easily.”
“Well,” said Lisa, “if its any consolation to you, I told her I couldn’t agree.”
The three of them passed through the door that let them out into the parking area, one by one. Then they formed up again to walk abreast to Chan’s Fiat. All the crates they had left behind in the labs and offices would follow in due course. Morgan and Chan weren’t allowed to export their work, of course, but they had piled up an impressive mass of personal paraphernalia over the years.
“It wasn’t a matter of doing the right thing,” Morgan said, effortlessly picking up the conversational thread. “I didn’t have the advantage of hindsight, and all my hopeful anticipations were betrayed by ugly circumstance. But science can proceed only by trial and error, and the errors are as informative as the successes, in their admittedly meager fashion. I may be a smug, selfish, secretive bastard, but at least I can avoid sanctimony.
“Of course I was wrong, in retrospect—but what a world we might have had if I’d been right! What a world we still might have once we’ve learned the lesson of the impending crisis, and once someone luckier than I has found a means of keeping us forever young without the penalty of eternal innocence. What a world!”
Perhaps that’s it, Lisa thought. Perhaps that’s the secret. Even Cassandra could have been cheerful if she had only been convinced that when all the mistakes have been made, honest endeavor and natural selection will see to it that we’re bound to get it right in the end.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgment
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
THG POLITICS OF MOUSEWORLD
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
Second Interlude
DISTURBIRG SYMPTOMS
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Third Interlude
HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
Table of Contents
Acknowledgment
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
First Interlude
THG POLITICS OF MOUSEWORLD
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
Second Interlude
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Third Interlude
HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE